Share via

Julie Lescaut can make arrests, dinner and love without so much as smudging her lip-gloss. She spends half the day as a Parisian police chief catching murderers and the other half as a single mother attending to her daughters — both with an immaculate sense of equity.

There is never a wayward bullet, a misguided decision or a sartorial gaffe. In short, Julie embodies truth, justice and hair conditioner.

Yet this month, the most celebrated TV detective in France will be taken off the air after 22 years, a victim of the country’s infatuation with American programmes.